Divorce is not inevitable, but it is a risk every marriage faces. No one plans on their marriage ending in divorce, but nonetheless divorce is a reality for millions of people. Admitting that possibility exists does not mean your marriage will end in divorce, but instead that you are aware of the risk, and can in turn be better prepared if it comes to that.
In most cases people are driven predominantly by emotion when it comes to making decisions about marriage and divorce. In an emotionally charged setting like a divorce, the decisions being made may have a significant impact on your future, so it is best to enter into that space with a plan. This is all in an effort to navigate the process of divorce, manage your assets, and come out of this unscathed and prepared to begin the next phase of life in a healthy financial position.
The women I work with tend to have a lot on the line. Each divorce process is as individual as the people in them, and each woman is worthy of personalized attention and strategic planning centered around her unique needs moving forward.
Before you enter a divorce you need to gather all your personal records and papers. You’ll need up-to-date information on your financial assets and liabilities. This information will help your divorce attorney and team members know the best strategy to utilize during your case in order to get you the best end result in the settlement process.
The decision making process can be viewed in several ways. Approach or Avoid are two simple ways to classify the method in which many charged decisions (and subsequent results) come to be. The “approach mode” describes the process of engaging when there’s a desirable thing in the world you want to achieve, and an “avoidance system” kicks into gear when there’s an undesirable thing you need to avoid.
When the approach system is active, we tend to feel happy, excited, and safe. As a result, we tend to judge things as being relatively low risk. But when the avoidance system is active, we feel more anxious and fearful. This system alerts us that we need to be concerned about potential risks. It emphasizes dangers and clues us into the losses we may face. Becoming aware and familiar with our feelings and physical reactions can help us cue into our own risk patterns throughout the divorce process and likely save us from making hasty and costly decisions that will impact the rest of our lives.
Emotion has the ability to overpower our senses and functions. When this happens, we are prone to making poor decisions. It’s not a new discovery that our conscious decisions have a degree of emotional-involvement (known as gut feeling or intuition) involved. The best way to react in an emotional situation is to not react. What seems rational during that moment will seem different a few hours later. The goal is not to make better decisions when emotional, but to develop an awareness of our emotional state and control our reactions in the moment.
Both emotion and logic have a role to play in helping us make positive decisions. If we understand where our emotions come from and start to notice how they affect our thinking and behavior, we can practice managing our response and learn to make better choices that will inevitably help us in the long run. If Summerhill Wealth can be of service to you in this journey, please contact us. Together, we can preserve your lifestyle without drastic financial sacrifices.